Craig Mulholland is working hard to ensure the Ibrox outfit become more self-sufficient.
Rangers academy chief Craig Mulholland has admitted via the Glasgow Evening Times that first team boss Mark Warburton cannot come to him for players at this moment in time.
Mulholland has overhauled the Ibrox giants’ academy structure in recent months but predicted the benefits of this will not be felt for at least another four years.
Rangers’ youth system spawned Scotland internationals Allan McGregor, Charlie Adam and Ross McCormack during the 2000s, however the production line appears to have become stagnant in recent years.
Danny Wilson and Barrie McKay are the only Auchenhowie graduates to have featured in the Premiership this season and Mulholland has warned they could be the last for some time.
“We need to accept that we need to produce a much higher level of player,” he said, as quoted by the Glasgow Evening Times.
“The manager couldn’t have come to us at this moment in time and said ‘have you got a player that is ready?’ They aren’t because we only made these changes 18 months ago.
“It is going to take a few years for them to come through. If we are sitting at the start of the 2020 or 2021 season and we don’t have a number of players that can go and compete at that level then we have not done our job properly.”
Mulholland went on to reveal that the club would ultimately like to have “five or six” academy products in the first team, in a bid to encourage further youngsters to make the step up.
With Rangers not exactly awash with cash, investing in youth is perhaps the best way for them to achieve sustainable success in future campaigns.
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